Our Petulant Neighbour

Pakistan and Afghanistan shelved agreements that promised to more than triple cross-border trade. Afghan President Ashraf Ghani struck the trade deals with Pakistan soon after taking office last year as part of a broader rapprochement that included plans to share intelligence on Taliban insurgents active in both countries. All cooperation in is now victim to rivalry and suspicion, and we are both paying the price.

Pakistani jets killed 16 suspected militants in bombing raids near the Afghan border on Saturday, and police arrested dozens of people a day after Taliban militants killed 29 people in an attack on Badaber air base. The attack on the base on Friday was the deadliest ever-militant attack on a Pakistani military installation. It will undermine already rocky ties with Afghanistan. President Ashraf Ghani has blamed us for a lack of commitment to eliminating terrorism, and attacks on Afghani soil engineered in Pakistan. He should be grateful that Pakistan is not pointing the finger back at him, and the sad excuse that is the Afghan government’s security establishment. Communications intercepts showed the Pakistani Taliban gunmen were being directed by handlers in Afghanistan and the country remains a safe haven for militants on the run.

Afghan officials say the country is witnessing an “unprecedented” migration towards European nations. Some 77,731 Afghans applied for asylum in Europe in the first six months of the year, more than three times the figure in the same period last year, and higher than all previous years since 2001, according to the UN refugee agency. Afghans are the second largest group of migrants trying to make Europe their home, behind only Syrians. Afghan problems today, have little to do with Pakistani mischief. The Afghan security narrative must come out of the Cold War and update itself to today’s realities.

Pakistan’s Permanent Representative to the UN Maleeha Lodhi at the UN has issued a strong rebuttal to allegations that the escalating violence in Afghanistan was being driven from Pakistani soil. She said there were vast uncontrolled areas in Afghanistan from where such violence was emanating against both Pakistan and Afghanistan. Condemning all terrorist violence in Afghanistan, she told the UN Security Council that continued conflict in Afghanistan was not in Pakistan’s national interest. These are not empty words, the army has shown resolve. It has also had to suffer bitterly for its efforts.

The Afghan government seems to think that it is at odds with the Pakistani state- forgetting that the two countries are not enemies and have never been enemies. If it cannot see the suffering of the Pakistani people, and extend a hand of cooperation, it is complicit in creating an insecure environment where terrorism will flourish.